The Abbott Government's tabloid politics is very explicit with respect to the unemployed. That policy is demands, on threat of sanction, that the unemployed apply for 40 jobs per month, do 25 hours of community service a week, and wait six months before getting their first cheque.

The economic reality is that there are 750, 000 unemployed and approximately 140,000 jobs work for the dole is the answer because the dole bludgers are refusing jobs and staying on the dole because the work they are offered doesn’t suit their lifestyle. They are job snobs.

So the welfare recipients need to be punished and disciplined. No concession is to be made that there are less jobs now for young people than before the 2007 global financial crisis, or that only 36 per cent of job seekers finishing work for the dole obtained employment or education and training – compared with 61 per cent who had been placed in training. Work for the dole is unlikely to help people find jobs.

It is tabloid politics because the unspoken assumption is that recipients of government assistance are somehow conniving to receive something to which they are not entitled. The scapegoat terminology---a lazy piece of scum malingering on the public purse---is designed to malign all welfare recipients. It has nothing to do with what works to promote jobs or that the economy is not growing fast enough to create enough jobs to cover the new entrants into the labour force.

Comments

Get down out of your ivory tower and get some crappy clothes from life-line. Go and sit in centre-link in a shitty area for a couple of days and look and listen. Then come back and tell us all about it. You will see all the scammers, lazy bastards and dirty scum that are a waste of space and have no intention of working.

The above comment is a good example of tabloid politics given that many of the unemployed---approx 200,000 -- are over 50 years of age, have been made redundant, and are unable to find an employer who will give them a shot at a second career.

There are some employment barriers that older workers are facing which is why they are not being able to re-engage with employment.

For the first time in more than a decade Australia’s unemployment rate was at 6%. What is worrying is that not enough jobs have been created to cover the new entrants into the labour force. So the current unemployed over the past few years have been finding themselves unemployed for longer periods.

Was that you we saw - the well dressed bloke surveying all he saw with a cold and distance eye? Don't think we do not notice that sneering look.

So you think we have low IQ's too, right? But, somehow we are "scammers", and it is real smart to have nothing in our pockets, not much food, and nothing in our future. "Scrum", right? we are not even human beings like your good self.

Me mates and me are good blokes you know. We don't buy into your assumptions about what is good for us.

We were talking just the other day with a bloke called Socrates, who said we should serve the polis. Nah, we said, that would make us the exceptions - so it is not going to work.

Then we looked across and saw the well dressed bloke watching. Was that you? So we thought about it, and decided, "maybe". Now we have got to get the polis to recognize what we can do well, express ourselves and flourish, not as "scum" but as human beings.

Most people (70 per cent) cycle off unemployment benefits within 12 months, and use Newstart for short-term transitional income assistance. There is little reason to assume the bulk of this group is dysfunctional, particularly those who have worked and contributed for years.

What is the reason for gap between "rhetoric" and reality. It would not have anything to do with scapegoating? Once any group of people are dehumanized they are set for violence. Why do people engage in this behavior? Is it because they are ignorant, stupid, or are there other more malign reasons?

The Abbott Government is cracking-down on people on welfare because he reckons they are "job snobs" “rorting the system”. The ministers have no interest equipping the unemployed 45 year olds, recently retrenched after 20 years in the car industry, with the skills they need to make it easier to obtain real work.

Wmmbb,
I am not really concerned about what concerns rich folk or the poo'r. I am only concerned at amusing myself with the twaddle of the twaddling masses as they waddle through life.
Human nature is unhuman and inhumane sometimes. Lol